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Two plead guilty in drug case

NORRISTOWN - Two Royersford men have pleaded guilty to charges they participated in a scheme to buy 800 pills of the designer drug ecstasy from undercover police outside a King of Prussia restaurant last March.

"This isn't a personal use situation. They intended to sell them," Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele said Tuesday.

"It's a drug that we're seeing a lot more of. It's a dangerous synthetic drug."

Troy Dudas, 24, of 300 S. Sixth Ave., pleaded guilty to a charge of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. Judge William T. Nicholas sentenced Dudas to three to 23 months in the county jail and three years of probation. Dudas will be eligible for the prison's work-release program, meaning he'll have to spend all non-working hours in a prison cell.

Keith Evan Yanchek Jr., 24, of 805 Chapel Road, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to receipt in commerce. Nicholas sentenced Yanchek to six to 12 months in the county jail and two years of probation. Yanchek was also given credit for the six months and three days he spent in jail after his arrest, but he has not yet been paroled.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Dudas spoke with an undercover county detective by phone about five times on March 16 to arrange to buy the ecstasy pills.

The detective testified at a preliminary hearing last year that Dudas agreed to meet the detective in the parking lot of Dick Clark's American Bandstand Restaurant in King of Prussia at about 8:30 p.m. March 16. Dudas told the detective that Yanchek would be accompanying him, according to court records.

When the men met in the parking lot, Dudas told the detective he and Yanchek had $5,800 between them to purchase ecstasy. When Dudas agreed to buy 800 ecstasy pills, authorities converged upon the parking lot and arrested the two men, according to court records.

Ecstasy is abused to create an emotional state characterized by rapturous delight or euphoria. But Steele said the drug can lead to seizures, heart attacks, kidney failure, panic attacks and psychological difficulties.

"Right now, ecstasy is the single drug that we're seeing the most dramatic increases in the use and sale of it," Steele said.

Last month, dozens of people were arrested in connection to an ecstasy ring that operated out of the Norristown area. In court documents, officials said the ringleaders sold the pills to people throughout the county. Steele said Dudas and Yanchek were not associated to that ecstasy ring.